


Who are you, sweetheart?

by redsnake05



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Anarchism, Bisexual Character, F/F, F/M, Female Friendship, Feminist Themes, Gen, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-03
Updated: 2010-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-10 09:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsnake05/pseuds/redsnake05
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andy doesn't have a problem with her identity, just the asshole journalists who want her to justify herself and spill her soul. Why should she? They'll just see what they want, write what they want, and it's not like her words make a difference for them. It's her words to herself that are important. This is the story of Andy's decisions and the way she lives with them. The story explores the trials of sharing a van with Pete Wentz, the joy of FOB being signed, Fuck City coalescing into a solid unit, and, through it all, the nagging questions that people ask her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who are you, sweetheart?

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2010 Bandom Big Bang.

**Prologue**

Pete had his battered notebooks of words and phrases that jostled inside his brain and out his fingers in jagged spikes. Andy constantly found his broken pens under the seats in the van, crunching painfully into her knees as they packed and unpacked for shows. Patrick had his larger books full of music and even Joe had a little journal, though Andy had no idea what he kept in there. She'd never seen him write in it, anyway. Andy didn't bother with recording anything; she let all the performances that made up her life - touring, rehearsing, playing - flow over her and around her without seeking to settle it too hard. It was a comforting blur. Not that she needed that numbness anymore; it was nonetheless a familiar space.

The van was dirty, stinking of grimy skin, damp clothes and crushed snack food wrappers. Andy ached in the mornings when she woke up, cold and curled tight inside her sleeping bag on the van floor, often with a shivering boy pressed up close against her back. Sometimes she would close her eyes and think of home and her bed and what waking up with someone meant. Mostly, though, the morning was for vague remembrance and yawning, stretching the tiredness of cramped sleep from her limbs and peeling her face from a dirty t-shirt or someone's shoes. The others would wake and clutch their notebooks close like they were sleepy rabbit comforters to wrap themselves in. Andy would lie back and let the grey morning wash over her; unfocused and unremembered.

Sometimes it felt like her whole life had been spent on the road or in clubs and rehearsal spaces, especially when she first woke up in the morning. It was always too hot or too cold but the sensation gave her something to feel and reflect on, something that reminded her that she was alive when she wasn't behind her drum kit. At home, she visited her tattoo artist and watched the colour grow and bloom on her skin. In the van, Pete jostled her and sent a stab of pain through a new tattoo. She punched his shoulder.

"Why don't you fucking look where you're going?" she said, kicking out at him with little venom when he turned to her with puppy dog eyes and boyish enthusiasm.

"We're being interviewed!" he protested. "How can I be careful when I'm excited? I should hug you, that would be good. Andy, why won't you let me hug you?"

"Fucker," she said, smiling despite herself. "We're being interviewed by a campus radio station in - what is this place, even?" She needed coffee. It was too early and Andy was still sleepy, still getting feeling into her limbs after a night on the van floor.

"We need to practice," retorted Pete. "Obviously, I'm the charming one."

"You're the hyperactive freakish one," said Joe, looking up from the map and frowning back at Pete from his place in the front seat. "The one who gets given shitty directions that might make us late for the shitty interview."

"It's still an interview!" crowed Pete. "Don't make me hug you all, because you know I will."

Andy pulled her hoodie closer and settled back into her seat, tuning Pete out as Patrick got involved in the conversation too. She trailed out behind the others when they finally arrived at the little shed that passed for a radio station. Pete was practically vibrating with energy as the DJ motioned them in and settled them down round a console that appeared made of equal parts plasticine and lego. She sat gingerly on her chair, trying to stay well back from the desk just in case it all collapsed. Pete was crowding close, talking excitedly with the DJ, so it wasn't as if she needed to get right up the front. She'd been to a couple of interviews before; nobody much wanted to talk to the drummer.

"So, lets get this straight," said the DJ. Andy focussed on him, from his short cropped hair to his heavy boots as he pointed at Pete, absently turning a dial with his other hand. "Pete here is the motormouth bass player, right? And Patrick plays guitar and sings." He turned to Andy. "And who are you, sweetheart?"

Andy's mouth fell open for a long moment of speechlessness before rage kindled sharp behind her ribs. It hurt like being suckerpunched, with the same sick lack of oxygen and reason. Joe's hand on her arm barely restrained her. She scarcely heard Pete's voice, telling the fuckwit behind the desk that she was the drummer, although he didn't say that she was just filling in for a while. Andy didn't even care about him letting people think she was permanent, just about the arrogance of the DJ and how she wanted to tear him apart.

"Hot chick drummer!" said the DJ. "You're living in a van right now? Lucky boys!"

Patrick's hand slammed over her mouth as her anger started to find voice, possibly to be followed up by a fist to the DJ's thoughtless face. It would feel good, the squishy give of skin against bone as her hand compressed them, grinding the flesh into his skull.

"Fall Out Boy's not about those sorts of gender stereotypes," said Pete, interposing himself and his toothy grin into the space between the DJ and Andy's homicidal fury. She felt silenced, almost invisible. Joe's hand on her arm and Patrick's over her mouth were heavy, but Andy took a deep breath and deliberately relaxed under their weight. She felt sharp-edged and uncomfortable, caught like she had been as a child with her bony wrists poking out of lacy sleeves and a look of disappointment on her mother's face.

The pressure of Joe's hand eased, but he kept it there; either support or warning. Patrick let go of her, maybe to save the desk if Pete got too enthusiastic. Andy listened to Pete telling the DJ about the vision of Fall Out Boy, about crossovers and inclusion, and he sounded so fucking earnest that Andy wanted to punch him too. She shouldn't need defence and rescue; her hands and her head were her weapons, and she played the drums like they could save her more than any speech. She itched to be behind her kit now, but she listened to Pete's manic giggle and Patrick's thoughtful interjections, Joe's hand still warm on her arm. She let the fury simmer low in her veins, holding it tight like a sickness in her belly.

"Don't even talk to me," she spat at Pete the instant the door shut behind them. The DJ waved farewell from the window and Andy held back the urge to march back inside. Clenching her fists, Andy restrained herself from flipping him off as they walked back to the van. "If you value having your balls intact, you'll shut the fuck up and stay out of my way." Pete backed away from her with his hands held up in a comical imitation of harmlessness, but Andy clenched her teeth against her rage and got into her seat in the van. She pulled her hood up and put her earbuds firmly in place. She was silent through the drive, through setting up, through the clumsy noise of the opening band.

Usually, the lights and noise were a soothing hum on her skin, but at the gig they scraped on her nerves like nails on fresh mosquito bites, inflaming her further. She played hard, clean sweat sliding down her back and sticking her hair to her face in strands. Each beat was a crisp rattle, a neatly boxed sound to drive the rest of the band. Her anger jostled in her veins with endorphins and oxygen from the faster pump of her heart. In the end though, even exhausted and aching, she still felt the anger.

She packed the van in silence and settled on the ground beside it, huddled into her hoodie and looking up at the sky, trying to slow her mind down. Pete's laugh sounded in the distance, and Patrick was wrapped up in extremely earnest conversation with some tiny college students. Joe sat next to her, silently rolling himself a joint and ignoring Andy's wrinkled nose.

"This is why I should have just stayed playing in hardcore feminist bands," Andy said, finally. Joe choked on his joint, coughing as he snorted with laughter.

"You and the three other hardcore-playing feminists," he said.

"Fuck you," Andy said, but it lacked heat. The cool of the night was finally wearing her down, leaving her feeling sad and frayed.

"Dude was an ass," said Joe, "but he was an ass with a couple of hundred listeners who could see us play and buy our merch."

"Fuck you _and_ that bullshit," said Andy.

"Hey, no one cares what you say to interviewers in your head, and that's gotta be the only place that matters to you in the end, right?"

"You philosophical little fucker," said Andy. "Have you been listening to Pete again? I thought I'd forbidden that."

"If you won't talk, I have to do something," Joe retorted.

Andy nudged him with her elbow in gentle acknowledgment, jabbing him harder when he accidentally sent a stream of smoke in her direction.

She couldn't help but turn it over in her head over the next day, from the blinding anger to the cold feeling in her chest as she realised that hiding was something she was going to have to face up to. She found herself standing in front of a stand of journals at the next convenience store they stopped at, looking at the cheap plastic covers and shitty lined pages. She had to have somewhere to keep all the things she couldn't say outright. She wasn't like Pete or Patrick; there were no pretty metaphors for her. If it couldn't come out in the beat, she didn't have poetry. But she could try. She chose one with a red cover, and a black pen to write with.

Opening to the first page, she headed it _Who are you, sweetheart?_.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Andy first picked up drumsticks at school, hanging back in music to ask about lessons. The teacher was tall and intimidatingly sleek; Andy braced herself for offers of flute lessons, or clarinet. Her mother said she had to take something extracurricular, something that was supposed to get her out of jeans and off her skateboard, and this had to be better than ballet. At least she'd only have to dress up like a doll for the inevitable, painful performances. She didn't think they'd be enough to wipe the shadows of dissatisfaction from her mother's lips, but so long as the complaints about Andy's inadequacies weren't voiced, she could live with that.

"Hmmm. Guitar or drums?" the teacher asked. Andy blinked and let her perspective shift. She thought about what she'd seen on stage, about the rawness and ferocity she heard in the old Metallica tapes, the even older vinyl records her mom played sometimes.

"Drums," said Andy, and the teacher smiled.

"Good choice," she said.

Andy thought about that, about the edges she could hear in music; the ways that the drums defined the beat and bled into the feeling of the music both. She just wished she could remember the teacher's name, not just the satisfied red curve of her smile when Andy had first played on stage in a school band. Andy was dressed up, sure, but not as a doll. There was no costume, no make up, just the music.

Even serious interviewers, the ones who were disinterested in whether Andy wore lip gloss or lip balm, asked about how she came to play the drums with a kind a sacred intensity, as if a girl choosing to learn rhythm was some kind of mystical initiation, or perhaps the result of alien intervention. Andy had known that the drums were meant for her by about her third lesson; her mother had taken longer to convince. Andy still didn't like to think about the way her mouth had compressed tightly whenever Andy played, the way she looked, so often like she was biting her tongue over a criticism, even now, when Andy was making a living from her music. Andy should be used to being a disappointment. Music never disappointed Andy; she had never felt like she gave it less than her best. That had to mean more than her mother's approval.

Andy would talk instead of Metallica, of Lars Ulrich and the way he held a band together; the passion he had for sound. Those topics were easier, cleaner, and avoided emotions; three things Andy appreciated in interviews. But the flourish of her name on the first ever drum lessons sign-up sheet and the way her teacher spoke of possibility were what set her on the road, no matter what she said to the outside world.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Andy had known Pete for a long time. She knew how he clutched the neck of his bass as if it would save him from his nerves each time he went on stage; how he sounded as he wound down at the end of the night and stilled enough to really talk about the things that were important to him. She'd played in bands with Pete, and that meant a special kind of knowing. The rhythm section had to be able to read each other and stick together. Andy had met other bass players who thought that she wouldn't be able to keep up. There were ones who would fuck with the tempo and hope she'd fuck up in response. She didn't know if they wanted to mock her afterwards or offer her personal lessons; she never fucked up. She wasn't interested in their offers.

Pete was easy, once he was playing. He never forgot the crowd and how important they were to the sound, and even if he hit a bum note or six he made up for it in other ways. He sometimes excused himself to Andy with a shamefaced mumble of an apology for not being very good, but mostly he just played like he loved it. Andy could respect that where clean technical brilliance sometimes left her cold, or a patronising attitude would leave her fuming.

That didn't mean she was going to join his band permanently, though, no matter how much he begged or got one of his tiny bandmates to do it for him. It was most often the very smallest, Patrick, all stammered compliments and a shy blush under his trucker cap. Andy sometimes wondered how he brought himself to play music at all. She'd seen him playing, though, and he was nothing like the nervous boy he was off-stage. He was even better when Andy played with them. Andy had heard Pete's words mumbled in a half-broken slur at the wrong end of a hard night; she'd never heard them stacked up and polished, held together with the resin of Patrick's music. That was good too, but Andy still didn't plan on changing her mind. It was okay to help out, okay to be part of it sometimes, but Andy wasn't sure that she wanted this forever.

"Pete says you're going to change your mind," said Joe. He was not so little; bigger than Andy, anyway. He had a coke and a straw and an earnest expression pasted on over his post-show high, and Andy wanted to take advantage of him each time he opened his mouth. "But I think Pete's crazy," he continued.

"You don't think I should join your band?" she asked.

"Oh, I think you _should_," said Joe. "I just don't think you will. It's because of Pete, isn't it?"

"I've already toured in a van with Pete Wentz," she said. "It's not an experience I am eager to repeat. Overnight is almost pushing my limit as it is."

"We'll keep him out of your way," Joe promised. "I'd tell you that I would protect you, but Pete says that you're a feminist and no self-respecting feminist would want me protecting them against something as wonderful as him."

"I don't think you should be allowed to listen to Pete," Andy said. That sounded like exactly the sort of advice Pete would give a kid.

"If you join our band, you can prevent me from listening to Pete," said Joe. "I will promise to only listen to you forever and ever."

Andy was tempted, but not by the offer to be in the band. Joe was young and adorable, and she was sure that he'd fuck beautifully. He had all the eager look of someone who would find gratification in her pleasure, and that sort of adoration never got old. For a moment, she imagined what he'd be like; breathless and helpless underneath her as she sucked his cock in the back of a van. He'd probably blush right down his chest, probably stammer over her name in a kind of awed whisper like he was scared that she might stop but wanted her reassurance too, her telling him that this was okay.

"Andy!" crowed Pete, flinging himself onto her back and hugging her tight. He was clammy and Andy elbowed him sharply in the ribs. "Ow," he said, not letting go of her until he'd planted a sloppy kiss on her cheek. "Have you decided to join my band yet? Isn't this fun? Don't you want to live in our van with us all the time?"

"That's a no on all questions," said Andy. Joe snorted and wandered off with his finished coke, looking for a trash can.

"But you'd get to spend time with me," said Pete. "And Joe. Look at him, isn't he adorable?" The last was voiced low, with a teasing tickle of his fingers over her ribs to punctuate it.

"Much more adorable than your Spider Monkey impersonation," said Andy. "I'm too small to climb." Pete pressed a smile and a kiss into her neck and looped a leg around her as well. "Pete, you'll knock me over and then I'll never join our band," she warned. Pete ignored her, so Andy elbowed him again, harder this time. He let go and stepped back, rubbing his stomach with his hand and looking wounded. The look faded quickly back into his habitual grin.

"We're going places," he said. "This band is going to be huge."

"Yeah, I think you are too," said Andy.

"So why won't you join us?" asked Pete. "You're the best. We don't want some ego-driven douchebag with a bad attitude. We're making music that could fit you."

"Music that appeals to chicks, you mean?" asked Andy.

"Jesus, do I need to repeat all that stuff I said about demographics and the changing scene? Because I don't want to." Pete scowled and Andy crossed her arms over her chest. "Why don't you want to join us?" Pete asked.

"You're in this for the long haul," said Andy. "You're going to make it big."

"We are," said Pete. Andy looked at him and saw the determination there. She didn't know how to say that she wasn't sure that she wanted that as much as he did. Andy wanted to make music, but sometimes she wasn't sure where that passion stopped, or if she could commit to this. She was pretty sure Pete's passion didn't stop. He wanted to make music and touch people's lives.

"I don't know if I'm the committing sort," Andy said, finally.

"I don't believe that," said Pete. "Take a look at your ideals and try saying that again."

"Jesus, Pete, a band is not a new gauge in my ears, for fuck's sake."

"You don't even have gauged ears," said Pete. "And it's not that at all. It's like a tattoo, something that you let get under your skin. Closer?"

"Maybe I don't want you under my skin."

"But you want this music. You want these kids. Who else do they have? We make music that we love, we can give them something special."

"Maybe," said Andy. She hated having to admit that Pete made sense.

"Fuck maybe," said Pete. "Fuck that bullshit. You want to keep on screaming about privilege into the deaf ears of hardcore sexist assholes who think that standing up to piss means they're standing closer to god? Or you want to make music that does something we've never had before?"

"Fuck you, you make it sound so appealing," said Andy. She couldn't quite believe she was really considering it, but Pete was reminding her of all the reasons she wanted to play music. She could have all of this; she could feel the chance of success in front of her.

"I should have majored in marketing," said Pete. "Imagine what a kickass ad exec I would have made. Andy Hurley, we need you." He pointed one finger at Andy and spun in a circle, stumbling at the end. Andy grabbed his elbow and righted him.

"Yeah, okay," said Andy. The words were out of her mouth almost before she'd considered them too hard, but it was too late to take them back. She started to smile.

"Yeah, I should have been an ad exec?" asked Pete.

"No," said Andy. "You've convinced me, you bastard."

"You'll do it?"

Andy nodded and found herself wrapped in Pete's arms as he yelled for Patrick and Joe to come quickly, he'd convinced her. A whoop and the rush of footsteps told Andy that at least one of them had heard, and she was unsurprised to find herself jerked out of Pete's wild embrace and wrapped up in Joe's arms as he spun her round and round till she could blame the dizziness on the motion. He put her down and kissed her cheek with respectful chasteness. She smiled and kissed him back, telling herself that she was not regretful of missing out on fucking him. It was just hormones; playing hard would soon take care of that.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

When interviewers asked her, false smirk in place, if she had a boy back home, Andy had to grit her teeth even more than usual. There was no right answer; not for her. The question never failed to elicit ten minutes of angry ranting later, when they were back in the van and safely out of earshot. The others let her talk herself out; she knew they only worried when she got quiet.

There were smirks from the interviewers, and knowing leers, and the quiet suggestion that just maybe, perhaps, she could secure a more sympathetic interview - if she provided the right incentive. Andy wasn't ashamed of liking sex, not at all, but she didn't want to talk about it with judgmental assholes either. Particularly not ones who wanted to 'persuade' her into fucking them. It wasn't up to them to decide if she was too slutty or not slutty enough. It wasn't up to them to say that she couldn't like girls; that she should only like men who'd be able to tell her what she wanted.

So she didn't say anything, just an enigmatic smile. If they persisted, she'd say 'it's complicated', and let them build all sorts of fanciful dreams about what she did and with whom in their heads. It didn't matter what they said on paper, or so she told herself. She could write the real answer in her journal later. That never changed. There was no one waiting for her, or, at least, no one in the sense the interviewers meant. She had an apartment and a network of friends, of activist colleagues, of family.

After she'd finished with her journal, she always got out her phone and let the voices at the other end of the line soothe her.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

"Being signed means a bigger apartment, right?" asked Kylie. She had her arms around Andy still, holding her tight, and Andy could feel her smile pressed hard into her hair.

"You're only with me because of my money," sighed Andy, mock sadly, squeezing Kylie harder.

"And your sexy body. We can have a cleaner too, right?"

"Slave labour," muttered Andy.

"Am I going to get a hug too?" asked Matt.

"Fuck off," said Kylie. "I'm using my magical hugs to get a better apartment and a cleaner."

"Andy's using your magical hugs to get some quality time with your tits," Matt protested. "I want my hug."

Andy lifted her head slightly to glare at him over Kylie's shoulder, but before she could speak the door banged open and two other men burst into the room with howls of congratulations. The moment was lost as the two tackled Andy and Kylie, knocking them over onto the couch in a tangle of limbs and noisy voices.

"It was my turn for a hug," complained Matt. Andy looked up from underneath Stu and Ryan and laughed at the disconsolate look on his face. He met her gaze and grinned, bright and clear, and seemed to catch the joyous spirit that Stu and Ryan had sparked. He jumped on top of the four of them, ignoring Kylie's protests, and kissed them all impartially. Andy laughed and squirmed around to push Ryan further forward into Matt. Her news had seemed too big for her to hold, but with her friends jumbled in close it seemed much closer, more like something she could keep close and enjoy. She let the happiness flow through her, circulating through the others and back, incandescent and fiercely felt.

"Get off, get off," said Kylie, catching Andy with her elbow as the hug disintegrated into an undignified wrestling match. "Get off, we have to have a toast. First one signed and going places!" Stu pulled away from them, catching Kylie's hands and pulling her up even as Matt grabbed at her ankles. He let Kylie go, distracted, as Andy and Ryan turned on him. Andy lost herself, for a moment, in the joy of battle. They were unrestrained with each other but not careless. Andy laughed as she held down one of Matt's arms with one knee, digging her fingers into his ribs and listening to the shrieks of laughter he made as he struggled. Ryan had his legs pinned and was tickling his other side and Matt pushed at them both ineffectually with his free hand as he threatened, with increasing breathlessness, to make them sorry. Andy didn't care, she felt like she could be in this place forever.

Andy felt like this was the joy she'd been looking for ever since she'd gotten the hysterical call from Pete, followed by the more coherent one from Patrick. She'd been walking home with a bag of groceries and some new comic books and she'd looked up at the sky and felt like the recording contract was as ephemeral as the clouds. This, though, the slide of Matt's skin under her fingers and the huff of Ryan's breath next to her, this was real and solid, something that made a contract more tangible.

"Okay, break it up," shouted Kylie, standing over them with glasses clutched in her hands, Stu next to her with more glasses. "Come on, we'll have the neighbours complaining again."

"Like when they thought we were having an orgy," said Ryan, letting go of Matt. Andy squeaked as Matt grabbed her and pushed her over, rolling her over and pinning her easily. She wasn't scared, even when he loomed over her and held her wrists, but her heart beat fast and her mouth went dry for an instant before he swiftly tickled her in retaliation. She screamed and pushed at him. Her ribs hurt from laughing and her cheeks ached, and she felt happier than she could remember, maybe ever.

"I think it was Andy's screaming that did it that time too," said Stu. "Matt, come on, these glasses are cold."

Matt let go of Andy and rolled away, leaving her lying on the floor, panting and happy, looking up at her friends. Ryan gripped her wrist and hauled her up, and Kylie offered her a glass.

"A toast," said Kylie. "I must have known something was going to happen when I made the iced lemon tea this morning."

"There should be a toast for you being successful in the kitchen in the first place," said Stu.

"Shut up," said Kylie. "This is Andy's toast, for being the first one signed and on the road to the big time."

Andy looked at each one of them, seeing the happiness in their faces and their pride in her success. The sharp smell of the lemons seemed perfect and she knew her grin matched the ones she could see round the circle.

"I'm not making a speech," she said.

"You'll have to be interviewed," crowed Stu.

"That won't be a problem," said Matt, "Pete Wentz never shuts up."

"But sometimes," said Ryan. "And soon you'll be playing in arenas, and girls will throw their underwear."

"Girls already throw their underwear at Andy," objected Kylie. "I found some down the back of the couch just yesterday."

"Quiet," said Stu. "Andy wants to speak. She's a rock star now and we have to listen to her."

"Guys," said Andy, trying hard to keep a straight face, "I promise that I will use my stardom for good."

"A better apartment," said Kylie.

"And cooking lessons for you," retorted Andy with a smile. "I'm going to do my best."

"Because you're kickass," said Matt. "Let's all drink to Andy's recording contract, the first of us to get hitched."

They all raised their glasses solemnly and drank, and Andy felt the iced tea slide down as if it was carbonated; it fizzed through her like a piece of happiness in a slice of lemon. She grinned as she lowered her glass, catching them all looking back in a moment of quiet.

"What?" she said.

"I can't believe Kylie actually made something tasty," said Stu.

"Shut the fuck up," said Kylie. "You can take the glasses back to the kitchen, just for that." Stu grumbled, but he took the glasses as the door opened again and more friends started to spill in.

"Party?" Andy asked, looking at Kylie and then at Matt.

"Hell yeah," she said. "Got to celebrate." Matt grabbed her and ruffled her hair, laughing as she pushed him away. She stood in the middle of an increasing swirl of people, the noise of music and voices filling the space. It packed all her happiness inside her where she could tuck it away for later.

Kylie found her later, sitting out on the balcony looking up at where the stars should be. Behind them, the party was winding down and the city outside was stilling too. Only the occasional car crawled past in the dark, and most of the lights were out in the surrounding buildings. Streetlights still glowed, and Andy hated their orange reflections on the smog and cloud where she should be able to look clear through to the edges of the universe.

Andy looked up and smiled as Kylie sat next to her. She could remember the first time she'd met Kylie: seventeen, lonely and so angry. Kylie had taken the seat next to her in music and Andy had liked her t-shirt and her shoes. She'd waited with a fair assumption of indifference to see if Kylie would live up to their promise that she was unusual, worth knowing.

"Did you ever think one of us would get this far, really?" she asked. "When we used to talk about this, as kids, I mean."

"Sometimes," said Kylie. "I always knew you had the talent. But getting signed takes more than talent."

"Coincidence," said Andy. "Our only friend."

"When you get famous, then it can be fate," said Kylie.

"No, no, we're not having the discussion about fate again," said Andy. "Not tonight, anyway."

"Okay," said Kylie. "I can wait." Andy smiled at the look on Kylie's face and the way she reached over and rubbed her thumb over the back of Andy's hand before drawing back to pick up her glass and drink. It was such an unconscious gesture of comfort and acknowledgement; a touch Andy had grown used to, but still noticed. Kylie didn't look so much different than she had at seventeen, when she was the first friend Andy had made who really understood the rhythm and the beat that drove her. They'd gone to gigs together; seen bands and met people; worked out what life meant.

"What are you smiling at?" Kylie asked.

"Oh, I'm just thinking about all the things we did when we were younger."

"Do you remember the time we went to that gig and the dude at the door was all 'oh, the ticket costs a blowjob, _jailbait_'?" Kylie asked.

"Do you remember his face when he realised that the club owner was right behind him?" said Andy. "Yeah, good band, shitty asshole with fucking issues. It was the story of our lives."

"I sometimes think it's still the story of our lives," said Kylie. "We weren't even jailbait by then."

"Didn't we meet Matt that night?" Andy asked. "Or was it the night at the all-ages gig with the racist opening band where the lead singer slipped while goose stepping?"

"The racist one, I think." Kylie looked closely at Andy, who looked away from her scrutiny. Kylie reached out and touched her hand again, and Andy turned her hand over this time to catch Kylie's fingers with hers.

"That was a long time ago," said Andy.

"Sometimes it seems like yesterday," replied Kylie. Andy thought of all those nights, of the way Matt became closer to them both. She remembered the way she got giddy when he held her hand; the way he'd smiled at her, wide and uncomplicated.

"Sometimes," she said, agreeing with Kylie's thought instead of adding her own. Kylie would already know what she meant. It sometimes felt like a thousand years since she'd been that girl, so open and optimistic with the feeling of Matt's skin under her fingers a simple pleasure. An age had past since they had slipped into being friends, but Andy hadn't quite forgotten. She looked back through the open door into the apartment. She could see Ryan picking up cups and paper, but no sign of Matt. He was probably already gone, back to his girlfriend's place.

"And when you're a rock star and girls want to talk to you after gigs, you'll still be the same," said Kylie. Andy could hear the love and the confidence in her voice.

"Yeah," said Andy. "Yeah, I can be that." Kylie leaned forward and hugged Andy close again, letting go of her hand to slide her arm right round Andy's shoulders. Andy reciprocated, enjoying the warmth and strength of Kylie's embrace.

"I got that tea out of a box," Kylie said.

"I know," said Andy. "But you stirred it with your own hands."

"That's the important thing, huh?" asked Kylie.

"Stirring is something you're good at," answered Andy. Kylie laughed and Andy joined her. She closed her eyes against the orange glow and concentrated instead on the sound of Kylie's breathing.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Even if they were not yet big enough to have a bus, at least a recording contract meant a slightly bigger, more reliable van with actual padding in the seats. Andy still woke up most mornings with her face pillowed in someone's discarded t-shirt and with a boy plastered to her back, but the shivering was less common since they now had heating.

"Pete," said Andy, without opening her eyes, "trying to cop a feel by pretending you're asleep is lame even for you. Get your hand out of my sleeping bag before I break your fingers."

"You can't break your bass player's fingers," said Pete, snatching his hand back anyway.

"I can if he's a creepy douchebag who fails to live up to his earnest little values about doing things differently," she said. "Also, you play bass really badly. Breaking your fingers would be doing the band a favour."

"I do not play bass badly," he protested.

"You're still a creepy douchebag," she said. She heard Patrick mumble something from the other side of the van and smiled internally. The thought of Patrick was enough to get Pete moving. Andy tried to settle more comfortably on the floor; she wanted to drift back into dozing and let the morning get more mellow before she rushed out to meet it. A crash from Patrick's side of the van made her jerk awake again. Pete could be a handsy and oblivious arsehole, but there was rarely malice there. He had no boundaries, but he also had an impressive collection of past black eyes. Two had been given by Andy.

Turning over, she listened to Patrick's voice rise and thought of the journal tucked into her sleeping bag with her, its stiff cardboard cover softening and curving from being tucked up against her skin every night. Next time, she'd remember to get a plastic one, since the only place she could rely on things being safe was in her hands.

Pete tumbled back from Patrick's side of the van and landed next to her with a loud bray of laughter.

"Don't fucking come back, fuckface," grumbled Patrick, his annoyance making Pete laugh harder. When he turned his gaze onto her, she just showed her teeth a little in the merest semblance of a smile.

"Learn some fucking boundaries," she said. Pete scowled for an instant before bouncing forward to open the door to the van.

"Ooooh, Joe and coffee," he crowed. "Here, give me Patrick and Andy's coffees too. They don't deserve them."

Joe poked his head round Pete, holding the coffees out of reach. "Did someone slip him something?" he asked.

"They're being mean," said Pete. "Andy went all anarcho-feminist and threatened me and she still won't show me her journal." Joe shoved a coffee into Pete's hands and pushed him out of the way. Handing over Patrick's coffee, he sent Andy an apologetic smile.

"If you're already in a bad mood, I hardly dare tell you that they didn't have soy milk," he said.

"Somehow, it's just shaping up as that kind of day," she said.

"Interview in an hour," sang Pete from outside, flat and braying and full of his own particular brand of manic cheer.

"Oh, _fuck me,_" muttered Andy. She sat up and grabbed her coffee from Joe and winced as the first mouthful washed over her tongue, too hot. Joe grinned and turned away without comment, handing Patrick his coffee and ducking back out into the early morning sunshine. Andy drank down her coffee in long gulps, caring nothing for the bitterness or heat, just the chemical kick. She swallowed the last bit and dropped the cup on the floor. Bending her knees, she rested her arms on them and let her head hang down as she breathed deep, imagining that she could feel the caffeine metabolising in her bloodstream already. She imagined it interfacing with her brain, like she was the first person to taste it and feel the alertness rush through her.

She wondered how much of her wishing made it so, that her belief in the bean made it sink into her chemical reactions and change her. Andy wished she had time to brew coffee slowly, to sit at her own table and drink it down in small earthenware cups, fresh and bitter. She would be home next week in her little apartment with Kylie's flat singing and incessant band practices; she could almost taste the early morning on her lips, clean over the fading taste of her finished, faceless coffee.

"Interview time, bitches," crowed Pete, arms waving over his head. Andy raised her head and glared at him. Pete grinned. "Put your best panties on, Andy. We have to leave soon."

Andy flipped him off and peeled back the sleeping bag, shuffling round for some relatively clean clothes. Her phone vibrated as she tugged a t-shirt over her head. She smiled as she looked at the screen and answered.

"Home next week," said Kylie, announcing it like it was her own personal benediction. Andy supposed it was. Living with Kylie made going home better, gave her a constant of noise and energy to associate with the concept. It was so different to when she had actually lived at home; she'd been mired in awkward silences and misunderstandings when she'd first met Kylie. She'd been all silent anger and repression, even when she started college. Kylie had been part of the first rush of her freedom, too.

"Yeah," said Andy. "It might not be soon enough to save Pete's stupid face."

"Don't start talking that again," said Kylie. "Besides, I have something to ask you and it won't work if you're wanting to smack his douchey mouth."

"He's a sexist arsehole," grumbled Andy.

"We've known that for years, yet you still live in a van with him."

"I keep forgetting," said Andy. She changed the subject away from Pete fucking Wentz before Kylie started detailing all the times Andy had sworn to never speak to him again. "Anyway, what do you want to ask me? We're heading off for an interview in a few minutes."

"Oh, Matt wants to come live on the sofa for a few days."

"Huh. Why are you asking me?"

"He got kicked out," said Kylie.

"He's single again?" asked Andy.

"Yeah," said Kylie, and Andy could hear the warning in the tone of her voice under the blandness. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. She cursed Kylie's memory of all her youth, all her anger and stupid decisions. She didn't need the warning tone to remind her of all the reasons why Matt was off-limits.

"Yeah, he can stay," said Andy. She clicked the phone shut and listened to Patrick shout at Pete for stealing his hat, thinking of her apartment and the way that Matt would fill up the spaces in it and remind her of all the things she couldn't have. She needed more coffee.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Journalists liked to ask about being straightedge. It was like it was unnatural, like there could be no harm in stepping outside of one's control, like the sweetness of alcohol never burned. Andy couldn't make her lips form either cliche or truth, both encapsulated in the same words: being edge saved her life.

There was no big drama that accompanied her decision to be edge. She didn't hit rock bottom in a gutter, didn't crash her car or end up in a hospital or a church. She opened her eyes in yet another grey dawn, looking out from the balcony of an apartment that belonged to someone she didn't know, and the world swam in front of her. It would be easy to say that she'd contemplated jumping, that she'd thought about death or escape. It was nothing so dramatic. The noise of the party was loud behind her and her last drink, or maybe ten, swam in her veins. She felt cotton-wrapped and soft; it was such a _relief_ to be able to let go of all the anger and tightly twisted fear that lurked just under her skin, barely able to be recognised.

Andy didn't like to get introspective, but she was alone on the balcony in a grey, foggy dawn and the fading alcohol was revealing uncomfortable truths as it ebbed. They were the things that made her squirm and scowl, desperate for another drink. That's when she realised that the anger was always there, that the alcohol didn't wash it away. It was still there, under her skin, red-black and violent. Standing shakily, she reached for her empty glass only for it to slip from her fingers and smash on the ground. Looking down at the glass round her feet, she realised that she would one day fuck up too badly to recover from. She'd anaesthetise herself to oblivion too thoroughly; she'd do something stupid, and she'd be dead.

At home, she wrapped herself in a blanket and rode out her last drinks. She said goodbye to the numbness, the quiet and temporary surcease. It was one of the kinder farewells in her life, but no less hard for all that.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

She never seriously regretted being edge, not really. It became something that she could use to define herself, with a special meaning that the everyday application by other people couldn't shake. It was a self-affixed label, bold and fierce.

She'd forgotten what alcohol tasted like, nearly, except secondhand and stale on someone else's tongue. When Joe kissed her on the last night of the tour, late into the night, it seemed fresh and intoxicating again; she remembered what she had loved about the freedom that alcohol seemed to offer. Joe was soft and clumsily passionate, hands on Andy's face and shoulders as they sat in the back of the van, waiting for Pete and Patrick to get back from wherever they had gone.

"Joe," she said.

"Don't," said Joe, mumbling the words into the soft skin under her jaw, and Andy swallowed hard at the rasp of his stubble on her skin. Andy wanted to push him away, but she'd thought about kissing Joe for a long time and the heat of his mouth was making her forget why he was off-limits. He kissed her again and Andy kissed back, selfish for an instant. Making a pleased sound into her mouth and tugging her closer, Joe's fingers were uncoordinated as they slipped over neck, her throat, one sliding down to her breast. Andy wanted this, she could feel her body responding to Joe's actions. It would be easy to push him back in the seat and climb into his lap. One of Joe's hands slid to her waist, wriggling inside her t-shirt and settling on the bare skin of her back. Kissing him back hard, Andy shifted closer, one hand in his hair, the other sliding up his thigh. All her nerves were singing, a chorale of pleasure that was hard to fight against. This was the only intoxication she had left; she had always been helpless against it.

Pushing him away reluctantly, Andy tried to make her lips form words she didn't want to say. She couldn't fuck Joe; not right now, in the back of the van, and maybe not ever. Remembering was hard. "Not just because you're upset," she said.

"Not just that," said Joe. His lips were swollen and Andy could taste him still. She watched him lick his lips and wanted to kiss him again. She wanted to feel those lips over her skin. "Wanted you for a long time. That's why I always made Pete beg you to be in our band." He pulled her back, the tug of his fingers in her hair just on the right side of too much, the calluses on his other hand dragging over her skin to rest on her back. His lips were still soft, and she took control of the kiss this time. He was beautifully pliant as she tilted his head just as she wanted it, but his hands were urgent and needy, and the juxtaposition was intoxicating. She shifted, one foot planted on the floor of the van and the other leg bent, getting closer, not close enough. Joe's moan as her hand brushed the waistband of his jeans was lost in the pressure of her mouth, and Andy knew that he'd do anything, let her have whatever she wanted. Shifting again, he arched up against her, seeking the pressure, the weight of her body. His hands on her waist spanned across most of her back, hot and deliberate touch that made Andy squirm closer. She wanted _more_, wanted to strip them both naked and have the run of his skin.

"Andy, please," moaned Joe, tipping his head back to breathe. He was the picture of desperation and lust, cheeks and lips reddened, body tuned to Andy's rhythms with an effortless understanding.

A part of Andy wanted to take what he was offering. The sound of Pete and Patrick's voices broke the moment before she could speak, though. Patrick was loudly berating Pete, nearly stammering with anger, and Andy wanted to forget everything. She looked at Joe, at the hazy, drunken curve to his lips and the way he'd tasted of rum, and knew that she would remember instead.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Sometimes, Andy liked to use different colours of ink in her journal. She guarded that close, though, fearful of ridicule and mocking accusations of girliness, like femininity was shaped by a fondness for hues. Like with colour came curves and softness and all the aspects of being a girl that Andy denied. She looked at her arms and the colour that decorated them, and knew that she came by her fondness for bright tones honestly enough. But there was a world of difference, in her head, between the curves of red and green, yellow, blue and orange under her skin, and that shapes of letters in her book. It made Andy nervous to think about, the kind of vague uneasiness she got when she thought about something contradictory that she didn't want to face up to.

She sat in her seat in the van, hands crossed in her lap over her notebook, pens somewhere in a mess at the bottom of her bag. She felt like she had nothing left to say right now, too tired to deconstruct her thoughts, too busy looking forward to the uncomplicated pleasure of clean sheets in her own bed, the quiet of her own space. There was too much she needed to think about, but mostly, she wanted to lie on the sofa and watch sports on TV with no one caring what she said or what she looked like. As the band got bigger, these started to seem like less obtainable luxuries. Pete had been crowing for days over the news that they'd have a bus on the next tour. Andy didn't think it would make a difference to the worst things about touring.

The van pulled up outside her building with a juddering noise and some cursing from Patrick. Joe slid the door open and levered himself out. It had been a long tour. Even Joe was looking stiff and uncomfortable, and the bags under Pete's eyes were black. Andy crawled out from the back seat, dropping her tote and duffle on the curb. She wondered if Kylie was home, if the house would be open and warm, if maybe Kylie had cooked. She thought it was unlikely. Neither of them were good at cooking.

"Get your fucking drums out," snarled Patrick. Andy flipped him a tired finger and trudged round to the back of the van, pulling the door open and her drums out. Joe helped her stack them on the sidewalk, leaning in for a quick hug before he climbed back in and the van pulled away. She shook her head as she watched it go, trying hard not to think of Joe's arms around her and how good it had felt. She couldn't think about that right now, too tired to consider the way Joe had looked in the moonlight or how hard it had been to pull away before Pete and Patrick opened the doors.

"So you got a hug," said Kylie. Andy turned her head to see her smirking from the doorway. Turning, she put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows.

"Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about," said Kylie. "You have a type. Hot and way too nice for you."

"I thought you said my type was anyone breathing," said Andy. "Don't think you're going to get a hug."

"Not until you have a shower," said Kylie cheerfully. "Come on, lets get this kit inside. I made some kind of freakish herbal tea that the dude at the store said would stabilise your fucked up biorhythms, and there will be pizza soon."

"I take it back, _you're_ my type," said Andy. She would have fluttered her eyelashes, but the effort was too much. She wasn't completely sure how she was going to make it inside.

"You're easy for anyone; it's hardly a compliment," said Kylie. "Yet I'm curiously flattered. It must be because you're a rock star." She punched Andy on the arm gently as she came to get some of Andy's gear.

"That's right," said Andy. She hefted the largest drum and headed for the door; best get them stacked by the elevator and take them up in one trip. Kylie trailed behind with a smaller load. "Is the elevator working?"

"You're not that much of a rock star," said Kylie.

"Fucking building," said Andy. She looked up at the stairs and wondered if Kylie would carry everything up for her. Andy could manage herself, just, and maybe her journal. She thought that might just be her limit, though, at least until after the crazy herbal tea Kylie had made and the world's longest shower.

"You are enough of a rock star to be interviewed," said Kylie, setting her load down beside Andy's and nudging her gently with an elbow.

"Have you been reading my articles?" asked Andy, looking back at her and taking in her absurdly solemn expression. She looked somewhere between earnest and diabolical, and Andy wondered what was coming next.

"I've got a scrapbook. I clip everything I can find and save it for posterity. Did you know that the most popular descriptor of you is 'elaborately tattooed, slight girl with a wild mane of hair'?"

"Have you _analysed_ them?" asked Andy. She wouldn't put it past Kylie to have a spreadsheet, with colour coded cells and complex notes on methodology. At college, Kylie had always gotten the higher marks in any kind of quantitative analysis. It was cute, how excited she got about them.

"Of course," said Kylie. "Why waste all that statistics learning at college?"

"Why not apply it to a job?" muttered Andy, putting down her last load and listening to the door clang shut behind Kylie. She looked up at the elevator display and thought about carrying the drums up all the stairs. She wondered if they would be okay in the hall, if she covered them with something.

"Did I just hear my mother speak?" asked Kylie. "Just for that, I'll allow you to go on thinking that the elevator is broken."

"Bitch," said Andy. She watched Kylie push the button and listened to the elevator whir and crank slowly down. She hoped that it didn't break down with them inside it; she doubted that Kylie would let her cuddle when she smelled like tour. "Are you going to tell me about your music?"

"In a minute," said Kylie. "Don't distract me. We were talking about your interviews."

"If you wanted to point out that the adjective 'girl' is always in there, don't waste your breath."

"Sometimes they use female," said Kylie, with the voice of someone pointing out a major flaw in an argument. "Never woman, though. It's the sneakers, I think."

"The hairy legs and smell," objected Andy. "I don't think the sneakers are the defining feature of my unwomanly nature. Seriously, we don't need to get into deconstructing all the social markers of femininity and how I fail to live up to them."

"I worry about how you sit through those interviews," said Kylie. She held the door to the lift open as Andy piled in her kit. It was a familiar rhythm, and not even the first time they'd talked about Andy's decision to embrace a more mainstream sound. Andy bit her lip and heaved the bass drum into place with the rest of her kit, going back for the stands in their bag. She didn't know how to explain it to Kylie either. Some days she felt like a motherfucking role model, like the alternative to all the passive, unresisting females that made up the lexicon of desirable aspirations. She would meet girls outside gigs and feel an odd kind of pride and protectiveness when they told her about playing in their garage, their breathless smiles and wide, wide eyes. Sometimes, they were sweet kids, sometimes older girls with an air of desperation; less often, they were in bands and playing hard in the scene. Those ones, their smiles were less breathless and more contemptuous. Like they wouldn't sell out, not like Andy had. They'd make it on their own terms.

Nights like those, Andy would find someone to fuck. She could control that encounter, at least. Anonymous sex had always been easy. She loved seeing people on their knees for her, loving watching them and encouraging them.

"Andy?" asked Kylie, snapping Andy out of her reverie. Looking up, Andy registered Kylie's look with a small smile.

"Tired," she said. "I worry about me in interviews too. Joe spends half of them ready to put his hand over my mouth." Kylie laughed, the big, booming laugh that Andy could remember at hundreds of little moments, and her smile widened too.

"I'll bet you like that," Kylie teased.

"Shut up," said Andy. "Are we fucking going up or not?"

"Oh, baby, we're always going up," Kylie said, letting the door shut and jabbing at the button for their floor. She flung her arm around Andy's shoulders. "Except for-"

"All going down jokes will be met with violence," warned Andy.

"Sometimes, I wish you'd decided to become a pacifist when you decided to become a vegan," Kylie grouched. She squeezed Andy a little closer and hummed. Andy watched the lights flick over slowly as the elevator crawled labouriously upwards and leaned a little into Kylie's side.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

There are two 'f' words that journalists never touched. That wasn't really true, because they listened to one, and said it enough; it just got airbrushed out of their final text. Print was sanitised, except the occasional direct quote. They never mentioned feminism either. Andy would sit in interviews with her notebook in her lap and a pen clenched in her fist and reflect bitterly that it was entirely possible that not one of the people interviewing them knew what the word meant.

She was called darling, sweetheart and baby to her face, but she guessed it was supposed to make up for the times she was called a bitch, slut or dyke behind her back. Both left a nasty taste in her mouth, but the casual assumptions of the first was the one that really ate at her. They saw her as a decorative plaything, despite the hours behind her kit tat had given her strength and purpose. On those days, she had to play harder, had to work harder, had to be more of everything.

Andy had met Kylie while she was still at high school, boxed in and furious. They both knew that there was something wrong with their world, something fake and sickening about it. It wasn't until they started college that they started thinking about what it was. Andy burned to challenge the cloying patriachy of the interviewers, to point out their assumptions and their falsehoods, the harm they did for every child who didn't fit into their carefully reproduced boxes. She wanted to rip apart their descriptions of her, she wanted to set fire to their offers of makeovers, their questions about hand cream and beauty aides where the others were asked about music. They never wanted to know about the important things.

Andy remembered her grandmother, right before she died, sitting upright with her dress straight and a cigarette stubbed out in the ashtray between them. It was a familiar scene, but the story she had told that day had made Andy's skin crawl with the hateful hypocrisy it encapsulated. She'd told Andy of her first child, born years before Andy's mother was born. She told of her own mother's tears, of leaving her job and going to the countryside to stay with relatives. There was pain and guilt and recriminations, even after the child was whisked from her sight. There was bitterness in her voice, and pain, and a clear-eyed view of the double standard that had nearly ruined her life. She wished she'd had Andy's choices. Andy wanted a world where everyone had them.

She didn't think that deserved a hateful spew of ignorance from people who'd known nothing but privilege.

Sometimes, in interviews, Andy would think of the Aunt she'd never known and wonder if she knew she was adopted, if she'd ever tried to find her birth mother. She sometimes thought of her grandmother, alone and ashamed of something that should have been natural. She kept that image sharp and clear in her mind and in her voice, when she spoke of being a woman in a man's business.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Andy watched Matt pace the kitchen, waiting for him to tire and sit. He took up so much space; Andy had always felt vaguely relegated to the corners by him. He drove her to extremes; he always had. She was wilder round him, louder and more passionate, but also reached her most quiet moments. Not still, though, never still. He made her fidget. He always had. Sitting at the table, she felt her fingers skitter over the smooth ceramic of her mug, rubbing briefly on the artificial grain of formica before she tapped a brief flurry of beats on the edge of the table. Stilling abruptly, she rubbed her hands on her thighs and tried to fold them in her lap. It didn't work. She felt too passive, but too restless too. Andy hated this feeling, like maybe she just needed Matt to be a bit _less_ sometimes. It never seemed to occur to him that she might not want so much.

He stopped and looked down at her.

"Am I boring you?" he asked.

"I wasn't listening, if that's what you mean," she said. Her voice sounded curt, she knew, but she was tired of boys stalking over the edges of her space to get the room they thought they deserved. She knew that's not what Matt intended, but she couldn't make herself stop. She just wanted some time and space to sort herself out, to let go of all her tension and forget all the uncomfortable compromises that formed a higgledy boundary to her life.

"Great," he said.

"Does it ever occur to you that I might have things of my own to worry about?" she asked.

"Of course," he said, but it had a false edge to it, like he thought the next step might be an entrapment.

"I just got home from tour with Pete Wentz," she said. "Did you think that maybe listening to a dude spilling all his problems over me might not be what I'm interested in right now?"

"Pardon me for thinking we're friends," huffed Matt. She could see the joking in there, like he was just waiting for her to smile. Then he'd sit down at the table and smile back and start all over again. Each one of his problems, pulled out and analysed, because _of course_ she had to be interested in them, _of course_ his need to tell them was more important than her need to forget the last few weeks and the relentless stream of Pete's moods, all outlined in black metaphor, spilled into her lap or Patrick's shoulder.

"Friends give other friends space when they need it," she said instead, striving for a middle ground between giving in and being his feminine confidante, and what she really wanted to do - tell him to fuck off and learn about why he wasn't the centre of the fucking universe. She felt pain in her hands and realised that her nails were digging into her palms. She unclenched them slowly and took a deep breath.

"Is this some feminist thing I'm just not getting?" he asked, tipping his head to one side and looking for all the world like a boy stumbling onto the periphery of something he'd heard about but never seen before.

"I know Kylie's fucking schooled you on this," she snapped, "so don't act all 'aw shucks' with me."

Matt dropped into a chair and folded his arms over the back of it, looking across the table at her. Andy fought the urge to cross her arms over her chest, to cross her legs or tap her foot. This was her kitchen; there was no need for her to feel so awkward. Matt looked at her, smiling big and guileless. Andy felt irritation skitter over her nerves. She pushed back from the table and left the apartment, letting the door slam behind her.

She hated this feeling, hot and edgy. It only faded slightly as she walked through the streets, cool air on her skin. The asphalt under her feet was hard and unyielding and she didn't want yet more edges around which to shape herself. It didn't take long to find a bar with some nameless band playing with bad amplification and an over-enthusiastic strobe lights. Slipping through the smoke and noise and the sharp-sweet smell of alcohol, she felt both better and worse. The edges here were soft, but, for a short moment, she wanted a cigarette and a drink, anything to anaesthetise her and poison her pre-emptively against the poison she sifted through each day in her head. Instead, she ordered water and scanned the scene. College kids in their carefree clothes danced on the floor in a sweaty grind. Andy grinned. This, at least, she knew, she could allow herself. She could forget everything in the pleasures of someone anonymous.

The girl was not much younger than Andy, sitting near the door where the music was quiet enough for conversation. She looked at her watch with a nervous twitch that told Andy she'd been there for a while. She didn't quite fit in with the crowd; her clothes were too dark and covered too much flesh. She wasn't a walking advertisment for meat market culture, but she didn't look like she was completely comfortable here either. Andy liked it that way. There was a hint of difference to her that made the approach more of a risk. The adrenaline was in her veins already, and this game, played right, came with the best kind of pay off. The woman didn't look up until Andy was right in front of her, indicating the spare seat at her table with a questioning tilt of her chin. The woman tucked her hair behind her ear, glancing at her watch one last time before she offered Andy a smile and a wave of agreement. Andy dragged the chair just a little closer before sitting.

"Waiting for someone?" asked Andy. The woman snorted and shook her head. "I'm Andy," she added, holding out her hand.

"Denise," the other woman said. Her grip was firm and Andy's anticipation grew. "And I'm tired of waiting."

"Why should you have to?" Andy asked. Licking her lips as Denise took a swallow of her drink, Andy thought about how she wanted this night to end. It wasn't just to chase away the melancholy of all the things she wanted but couldn't have. As she looked at Denise, taking in the curve of her jaw and the line of her shoulders under her shirt, she remembered how much she loved the intimacy of strangers. Denise was beautiful.

Later, with Denise pressed up against the wall outside her apartment, Andy felt nothing but the sizzle of triumph and lust. Denise tasted good under her lips, not too floral or sweet. Just honest. Her short little fingernails dug into Andy's back, pulling her closer as they kissed for long moments before Andy moved back to fumble with the key. She tugged Denise behind her, kicking the door shut and moving down the hallway. Hands already up Denise's top, she urged it over Denise's head, grazing her rough fingers over the smooth skin of her belly and chest. The tiny noise Denise made just made Andy burn hotter. She needed to lose herself in this sensation and let go of everything in simple pleasure.

"Where's your room?" asked Denise. Andy led her through the doorway and shut it behind them. On the inside, it was just the two of them and the honesty of their bodies. She didn't care about the lies Denise was hiding in her head, and was sure Denise didn't care about hers. It was just the simplicity of lust.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Morning light spilled through a crack in her curtain and Andy rolled over and buried her head under her pillow. Her weight rested awkwardly on one of her breasts and she shifted again, sighing as she got comfortable on the crumpled cotton of her sheets. She felt lazy and satisfied, as dirty soft as the sheets she rested on. Her mornings usually smelled of testosterone and Pete's burnt coffee. Her own bed was a luxury.

She'd heard Denise leave in the earliest grey light of the morning, a kiss pressed to a bare patch on Andy's shoulder in farewell, but no awkward words or expectations. Andy felt almost complacent. She rarely felt this languid. Her door banged open and she rolled over grumpily, peering up at Matt through heavy eyelids.

"Cover yourself up, fuck," he said.

"You barged in," Andy pointed out, leaning back on her elbows and deliberately not covering herself up any further. "What couldn't wait till I got up?"

"I'm off to work," he said.

"I'll miss you," she said.

"Just... did you forget I was sleeping on the couch?"

"No," said Andy.

"You just decided to parade your conquest in front of me?" he asked.

"Jesus, was I supposed to teleport us from the front door?" Andy retorted. She was feeling less satisfied now, the familiar restlessness starting to grow under her skin. "Go to fucking work and leave me to enjoy my sleep in. I'm back on the road tomorrow."

Matt huffed and left, slamming the door behind him. Andy lay back down, but her calm was in pieces around her. The sweaty dirt of the sheets wasn't comforting any longer. It made her skin itch more instead. There was an edge of anger now that had been resting, and she wished Matt would come back so that she could shout at him properly. She wished she could make herself say all the things she wanted to; risking the fracture of their relationship and all the complex nets of linkage that ran from her to him, via other people, via ideas. It was a soft prison of silence, sometimes, when Andy wanted to say something and all the web pulled tight in her chest and she saw every drop of blood and shared experience that bound them together. She felt herself choked in it when it should have felt like home instead.

Ten times, a hundred times, she'd gone to tell Matt how she loved him and how he stifled her, but the words couldn't make it out of her throat. This wasn't something she could say with her drums and her fierce beats. It was soft and slippery, as uncertain as the blouses she'd sometimes worn as a girl. The urge to speak warred with her lack of words until the silence sat as heavy and artificial on her mouth as blood-red lipstick. It stained her teeth and sank through her jaw and her skull, down her spine. She wished, everyday, that she didn't care about him so much. She wished, every moment, that she didn't still want him.

Everything was easier when the gaze remained in that conceit called objective, when she could point out the faults of oppression without herself being caught by her feelings. She hated it, the uncomfortable contradiction between what she wanted and what she could have. She hated that there was a risk in even thinking about crossing the line marked as 'friends' with Matt. She wondered if that was one of the reasons women were so eager to conform to the contortions of expectations; she could remember women talking of how they realised that the men they loved were other women's monsters.

Andy pulled her pillow over her face and concentrated on long, deep breaths. She didn't feel like sleeping anymore, and levered herself out of bed to follow the smell of coffee and Kylie's off-key singing. She'd be on the road again tomorrow and she didn't need to think too much about anything right now.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Sometimes journalists came onto their bus, when they got one. Andy hated it most when they rode along for a day. It was like packing your own vultures for a family picnic. Pete would laugh louder, even if Andy and Patrick could see the effort it was taking him and feared the way he would crash later and the hours of self-loathing recrimination that would follow. But Andy was reluctant to invite them closer to her. Her lack of invitation didn't stop them approaching, though. Sometimes, it was the friendly interest routine, but there was something about some of them that made her skin crawl. There was an assumption in their eyes, in the slick swipe of their tongue over their fleshy lips, in the twitch of their fatty fingers. Sometimes she retired to her bunk.

She'd never told the others about the one who followed her there, pushing aside her half-closed curtain and sitting down without hesitation or even the vestiges of social norms. Andy told him to fuck off out of her bunk, and he laughed and caught her ankle, sweaty thumb sliding over the thin skin, admonishing her to play nice. Her other foot met his solar plexus and she shoved him to the floor, scrambling out of her bunk. She ignored the nervous patter of her heartbeat, ignored the way her blood rushed in her ears. All that mattered was cutting him to shreds; she'd never been so grateful to be able to move and use her voice. She forced her voice to stay steady, as she told him about how she'd cut his balls off and get over her aversion to leather long enough to turn them into hackysacks. Small ones.

Unsurprisingly, that was one of the worst articles they'd ever had written about them. It was the hardest for her to rewrite into her own words. Pete sulked for days and Andy played harder than ever, fierce and determined. She wasn't going to let shit like that define her, even if she couldn't help the way it shaped her.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

"I might not have agreed to come out with you for a week if I'd known that these bunks were going to be so uncomfortable," Kylie groused, sitting on the edge of her bunk and prodding at the mattress.

"Because the van you just toured in was the epitome of comfort?" Andy asked. It felt good, having Kylie there for a few weeks. It had been a long time since they'd toured together, and Andy sometimes missed her on the road, late at night or early in the morning. Pete was often awake, but he wasn't the same. He was more of a minefield, but Andy knew Kylie better than anyone else and she missed the easy companionship.

"Don't diss our van," protested Kylie. She looked so ridiculously indignant that Andy wanted to laugh, but she stifled the urge.

"If you were expecting comfy ergonomics, you have to go tour with some other rock star."

"Oh no," said Kylie, "for you, I will make the sacrifice. You are important to me."

"It's true, I am important. Did I mention that I am a rock star?"

"That will be why you do so well at picking up chicks," agreed Kylie gravely. Andy did grin this time, with a wolfish touch. Being a rock star did make things easier, and there was no point lying about it.

"Andy's not allowed to pick up chicks this tour," said Joe, walking in from the front lounge. "It makes Patrick sad."

"Just because Patrick doesn't have my skills doesn't mean he should hate on my scoring," Andy said, letting her smile fade. She hated how Patrick was still a little uncomfortable with her sexuality. He was such a gentleman that she didn't think he could understand what she got out of her string of women. Joe sat down on the edge of her bunk and smiled at her. Kylie coughed from the other bunk and Andy looked up to see her smirking as Joe bounced experimentally on her bed. She glared back for a second, refusing to acknowledge the affection that had been contained in the way she'd smiled back. She was uncomfortable; the nagging worry that maybe she'd imagined that kiss still with her, coupled with the worry of what she was going to do if it was repeated.

"Andy has the most comfortable bed too," said Joe. "It's no wonder she gets all the girls."

"Oh, it's not the comfort of her bed," said Kylie. "Five bucks says she almost never bothers with niceties like _that_. In fact, Andy, do you remember that time, back when we were still at college, when you-"

"No," said Andy, "I don't." She tried to send Kylie a message to shut up with just her mind, but Kylie ignored her glare, instead letting her smile grow wider.

"What?" said Joe. "Is this a scurrilous Andy story? Tell it, please?"

"Anything for you, Joe. It involved a pretty boy, not a girl, and also a river barge."

"Kylie, do not tell this story. Joe, don't listen." Andy could feel her cheeks heating. She hated it when Kylie told these stories, even though she wasn't necessarily ashamed of herself in them. The teasing was the other side of their companionship, and she knew it didn't mean that Kylie wanted her to look ridiculous. Joe was sitting right there, on the end of her bed, though, and she didn't really want to talk about her conquests with him. It was something she just didn't do, though it wasn't for reasons of chivalry or any of the quaintly romantic notions that Joe might have thought prompted her reticence.

"But Joe is interested," said Kylie. Her smile was still amused; she obviously loved watching Andy squirm uncomfortably.

"Joe would probably be interested in that story about Racetraitor, the first time Pete was the stand-in bass player," said Andy. She felt a little squeamish even mentioning the incident, but she was desperate. Also, Kylie and Pete had fucked on the couch in Andy's lounge and it had been _loud_. She was still a little scarred.

"Oh you _bitch_," said Kylie. "We promised to never speak of that again." She smiled though, so Andy knew she wasn't seriously angry.

"What?" asked Joe. "What are you on about?" Andy kicked at him gently, ignoring the shiver that went through her when Joe caught her foot and pulled on her toes gently.

"Nothing you need to know about," she said. Even though she wanted to make Kylie uncomfortable, she wasn't actually going to tell the story. Kylie would never forgive her, and the possible escalation was too terrible to think of.

"Man, it's like when you first joined the band and called me Jailbait for months, even though I was already 18," he grumbled. Kylie laughed from her bunk and Andy glared again.

"You had such an innocent little face," said Andy.

"I'm all man now," said Joe. "I have to shave and everything." Kylie laughed harder than ever and Andy mentally wished for her to fall out of her bunk, and even considered telling the story about Pete.

"Yes, you're very grown up," agreed Andy. "Why don't you go harass Pete into telling you the facts of life now?" Joe just smiled and tickled her foot before he climbed out of her bunk and headed for the back lounge. Andy lay back and stared up at the top of her bunk, listening to Kylie's laughter slowly ebb. She felt so uncomfortable, like she was still seventeen and awkward, like she still drank and woke up in strange beds with strange boys panting into the back of her neck, unsure of how she ended up there. Like it would only take a moment to crack her facade and she would be back there, angry and helpless. Sometimes, it was hard to see the distance she'd come. Kylie shoved at her wordlessly until Andy moved over and let her stretch out next to her.

"I don't care about that story. Just, you don't tell yourself whatever shit your brain has cooked up," Kylie said.

"Fuck you," said Andy, without venom.

"You wish. It would break Patrick's ban, though." Kylie nudged Andy with her elbow until Andy shifted so Kylie could snuggle closer, worming her arm under Andy's neck and dragging her over comfortably.

"Fuck Patrick's ban," said Andy, voice muffled into Kylie's shoulder.

"You probably would," agreed Kylie. "I'd still love you, even if you turned into a ban-fucker."

"You're not so fucking cute," said Andy.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

The worst interviews, out of all of them, were the ones where the interviewer pasted on whatever passed for a coy look in their corner of the universe and fixed Andy with a smile so sickly sweet that it made her teeth ache. There were only two questions that came prefaced with that sign, and Andy longed for escape at the first twitch of their face.

She didn't want to date any of the boys in her band. But there were so many layers to that denial that the truth was wrapped up like cheap convenience food. Sometimes, Andy wasn't sure that the truth wasn't as worthless as the junk food, too. But she had to answer, prodded often by Pete's finger in her ribs. Patrick, she'd say, laughing her best false laugh, and add that he was Pete's first choice too. Patrick was clean and safe, and the sweet co-dependency of his relationship with Pete made her worry for him sometimes. He was still the best and safest answer to that question.

Few people knew that she'd slept with Pete, back when they'd first met. Fewer people still knew that she'd given him the first black eye on the day he thought he could presume on that one occasion. She sometimes thought about it and tried to remember what it was like. She'd been edge by then, so it wasn't alcohol that dulled her recollections. Sometimes she thought she didn't want to remember; if he was good, what he'd called her, whether he'd been sweet and dirty or just so-so. She sometimes wished that all her memories were so malleable. Pete never spoke of it, proving that the second black eye, the one time she thought he might tell the story, hadn't been wasted. Not even Patrick or Joe seemed to know, and that made it possibly the only secret that Pete had ever been able to keep.

Andy had never harboured illusions about Pete. He'd been convenient only. Patrick was something youthful, almost alien to Andy. He seemed to have come through his life unscathed. Sometimes Andy would sit next to him just to touch his unmarked skin and wonder at the way that years could pass with so few outward signs. Sure, Patrick was more assured, readier to speak with his own words and not just his music and the grafted fragments of Pete's metaphors. But he stayed young nonetheless.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

"I need to room with Patrick tonight," announced Pete, hanging round his neck like a dark cape. "We have sweet music to make, don't we baby?"

Patrick elbowed Pete in the ribs sharply, but his face showed only resignation and affection. Pete nuzzled the side of Patrick's face and laughed when Patrick pushed at him. It was early in the tour, first hotel night after only two weeks. The bus was better than the van; Andy didn't yet have the bone-deep need for solitude, and Pete still looked well-fed and Patrick rested. Andy didn't look at Joe. She was absurdly nervous about being left alone with him, worried about the silence and intimacy of the hotel room. They'd not talked about the kiss they'd shared in the back of the van, just over a month ago now, and Andy wasn't sure if she wanted to. Probably she didn't.

"Yeah, whatever," said Joe. "Just don't keep us awake all night with your bullshit. I won't stop Andy from schooling your ass on common politeness and courtesy."

"Oh man, I _wish_," laughed Pete. He looked happy, just on the sweet side of manic. He'd wind down slowly with dry-set words and minor chords. Andy scowled at him anyway and kicked at his ankle. He laughed again and jingled his room key, shuffling alongside Patrick towards the elevator. Andy looked at Joe to find him looking back at her, a little frown between his brows. Andy looked away from him and down at her own room key.

"I'll smoke outside," Joe said.

"Fucking right," said Andy. She shouldered her duffel and headed for the stairs, resolutely ignoring the sound of Joe's footsteps behind her. When he let the door to their room swing shut behind him, she kept her eyes averted. "You want the first shower?" she asked, dropping her duffel onto the bed nearest the door.

"Sure, if you don't mind waiting," Joe replied. Andy was grateful, both that he was going to shower and give her some space, but also that he wasn't pissing her off with chivalry. She stepped out onto the little balcony as the door to the bathroom clicked shut, leaning against the rail and looking down at the carpark below, the grimy rooftops barely visible in the sullen orange reflection of streetlights. She could hear the rise and fall of Pete and Patrick's voices next door, and the muffled bray of Pete's laugh made her smile at the familiarity of it. It sometimes felt, even this early in a tour, that this was all she knew: her drums, three boys, and the road. It was a non-traditional family, but Andy had run a long way from her single-parent family in a small town, and she wasn't sure that tradition meant much anymore.

Andy hated the smog. It settled grey on her skin, but not the silky cover of dust from dirty venues. This was synthetic and chemically harsh. Andy looked at the way the lights glowed orange on the underside of the clouds and thought of how much she hated the artificial sheen of the world she saw. Everything was slick and uncomfortable, like sheer pantyhose and cherry lipstick. Performance was everywhere; from the performance of gender she'd watched her mother enact to the canned responses she gave in interviews. If the world was a stage, it was small, crowded with product placements, and hung with bright billboards of fake needs and manufactured wants. On nights like this, she wanted to scrub it all off her skin, back to honesty and clean dirt.

Patrick's laugh startled her from her thoughts and she looked up and over towards their balcony. The door opened and she heard Pete's voice through it clearly on a wave of giggles, chopped up nothings of happiness that she knew would never make it to song. It made her feel better to hear it, though, to know that it still existed, even if the music that they finally made was just as manufactured as everything else.

Andy's voice was flat, when it wasn't sweet, and she didn't have words that rhymed and sank metaphorical fishhooks into literal heartstrings. She'd seen a video of a dissection at school, though, a sheep's heart laying flat in a tray, pinned open and bare. There were actual heartstrings, real tendons that held shut real valves. The blood that passed through them was real, and Andy thought of all the people who must have looked at sheep's hearts, chopped up and chunked into stew in the days before waste became fashion, and she wondered which of them first touched a heartstring and thought of sadness. She was pretty sure she'd never eaten heart, but she wondered if the tendons were crunchy, or if they softened and became lax with time and the application of heat and marinade. Her stomach turned slightly at the thought.

The bathroom door opened and Andy could smell Joe's shower gel and shampoo clear out onto the balcony, fake pine and some artificial musk and another performance of masculinity. It didn't make it better that she knew that he didn't believe in the performance; he just liked the smell. She had vegan soap in her bag, only barely scented, but she could remember her mother buying her soap scented with rose and jasmine, gardenia and other old-fashioned flowers. Sometimes, she missed it, but, really, one day in a bus would soon wilt any flowers.

"It's all yours," he called.

"Thanks," she called back. The night air wasn't refreshing, and she turned to go back inside without regret. Sometimes, it was easier to just long for all the charades to draw to and end without imagining the dramatic scenes that the apocalypse would bring. She couldn't even imagine a world after it, with no players, no faked deaths, no artificial scents to remind one of a chemically synthesised ideal of a past you never had.

"You're looking pensive," said Joe, coming past her to sit on the chair at the other end.

"What have I told you about borrowing vocabulary off Pete?" she said. Joe pulled out a bag of weed and blew her a raspberry.

"Just because I didn't go to college, that doesn't mean I don't know things," he said. "I have book learnings too."

"Yeah," said Andy.

"Do you think you'll go back to college one day?" he asked. "It's weird for me to think about. I've been in this band for so long that I can't imagine any other life, but you have other murky past experiences."

"I'd like to," Andy said. "If the world values paper, who am I to question it?"

"Dude, you're getting all philosophical. It's depressing. Go and have a shower." Joe grinned at her and Andy smiled back, just a little. He licked the edge of his rolling paper, and Andy heard Pete, half-laughing, half-yelling from the next room over, 'Nothing rhymes with philosophy, but that won't stop me." Andy shook her head and laughed softly.

"Yeah, you're right," she said. She wasn't going to push for something other than what they had; friendship and understanding.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Andy loved getting inside things. It was what she did, once she stopped hating and hurting. She liked to pull things apart and analyse them and find causes and effects. She loved people, too, but only in a large-scale view or up very close. The laughter of the flirty co-eds at the back of the coffee set her teeth on edge, but she could sit at a window of the fifth floor of the library and watch students walking back and forth to class and see the rules that shaped their interaction. She could sit with Matt in her room at night and watch the stars and talk. That hadn't changed since she was at college.

The apartment was bigger than any she'd ever lived in, and she loved being close to her made up, squished together family. She loved hearing Kylie's singing in the lounge, flat and off-key as it was. It was a comforting noise that had been a soundtrack to the most important times of her life. She sat in the windowseat of her tiny room and looked down at the street below and the people knotted in clumps and beetling in purposeful streams, and loved that too. The door banged and Kylie's singing died away. Andy sat in the quiet and looked at her new bare walls and wondered how long before the closeness got too much. She'd bet a while. She still managed to tour with Pete without actually hurting him.

"Do you remember that dorm we lived in together?" asked Matt. He leaned up against the door frame, there, but waiting to be invited in.

"I remember the cockroaches when we first moved in," she said.

"Kylie still can't cook," Matt said. "But at least now she recognises it."

"I think she just likes torturing us with her attempts to make decent spaghetti," Andy said. "It's okay, because we have you again and you are a domestic goddess."

"I am not wearing a frilly apron, even for you," Matt said. "No matter how much you'd like it. And I can't help it if my gran raised me right, while you and Kylie were dragged up by hyenas."

"I was angling for you to wear heels, actually," said Andy. "And Mom just believed in TV dinners."

"You believe in the end of the world," Matt said.

"Sometimes I think they're the same thing, just that TV dinners are a little neater." Andy looked at Matt and the way he was hovering by the door. He was something so solid in Andy's life, and she remembered, again, all the reasons she loved him. "Come in," she said. "Sit down. You're making the place look untidy."

Matt laughed and moved inside, sitting down on the end of Andy's stripped bare bed. He pushed aside a box with his foot and sent her a mocking glance. She laughed too and looked away, back out the window to where the people below were in different knots and twists, where their movement was eddying in a different pattern.

"So, I hear that Pete's going to name the next album 'Andy's Anarchist Love Bower'," Matt said. Andy snorted and looked up with a wry smile.

"Is he still on about that?" she said.

"Yeah, I've gotten half a dozen texts in the last hour," Matt said.

"He's crazy," said Andy. "Just because he still wants to get into Patrick's pants, years after they met, even though all the reasons for him to hesitate are gone." She thought of her own wants and bit her lip. "Most of them, anyway."

"Do you ever think about when we were kids?" Matt asked. Andy looked at the wistful slant to his smile and the way he looked on her bed, and thought about how this would have made her feel, years ago.

"Yeah, sometimes," she said. "Sometimes, it doesn't feel that different."

"I don't know," said Matt. "I mean, we're all moving into a house together, and you're a rock star, and I work in a fucking bar and have opinions on laundry powder. And Kylie's agitating to be allowed to sing on their next album."

"And we have merch and go to games together," said Andy. "It's like polyamourous anarchist date night at the gladiators." She glanced at Matt sideways to see him bite his lip, and wondered what he was getting at. She couldn't read him sometimes, even after all this time.

"Sometimes I feel like I've been married to you and Kylie for years without ever actually having sex," Matt says. "And somehow, that doesn't seem to be an important thing to miss."

"We've had sex," blurted Andy. She looked at Matt and saw him blush and look away. "You... what the fuck do you want to talk about, Matt? I'm not getting it." She felt confused about what was going on here, what Matt was getting at.

"I don't know!" Matt said. "I get so - I don't know! I love you, but I get so scared and choked up sometimes." Andy stood, feet bare on the cold bare floor.

"What?" she asked. "What are you telling me? And why?" Matt looked up at her, and he looked like a boy still, just like the goofy, crazily passionate boy that she'd first met. It was easy to stride forward and push him back onto the bare mattress, hands curling over his shoulders. His fingers clenched in her t-shirt too, dragging her after him.

"I don't worry like this with Kylie, or Stu or Ry," Matt said. "But with you... I feel all these fucking lines that I want to cross. And I don't know if it's just the fantasy of remembrance, or if it's real."

Andy leaned forward, her hands slipping up Matt's shoulders to his throat, resting on his bare skin as she closed the space between them and pressed their lips together. For an instant, it was clumsy and childlike, and she wondered if she had been imagining her attraction all this time, but then Matt's hands uncurled from her shirt and slid, one up and into her hair, the other down her back to pull her closer, and she tilted her head. This was _it,_ just how she remembered it being. But now they knew what they were doing and that made it hotter. Shifting, Andy straddled Matt and ran her thumb over his jaw, moving him slightly under her. Years of repression peeled back with a snap, leaving all the desire raw and urgent between them.

They kissed hotly, almost desperately, and Andy wanted to crawl right inside Matt and see him from the inside out. The heavy weight of Matt's hands on her skin, clutching her to him, was a possessive claim. Andy wanted to tug off their clothes and let the passion burn bright between them. It would consume them, Andy knew, and she wasn't sure they were strong enough to come out the other side.

"It's still a bad idea," Andy said, pulling back just enough to look into Matt's face. "Just like it was all those years ago."

"I know," said Matt.

"I'm tired of not getting what I want, but I think getting half of it and having it unravel would be worse."

"We can't know it would unravel," said Matt.

"Do you remember last time?" Andy asked. "Really? Remember how I broke everything that was good as soon as I touched it?"

"You've broken nothing in a long time," said Matt.

"I would break this," said Andy. She sat back, letting go of Matt and trying not to shiver as his hands slid away from her. Even though her body was urging her to slide back onto the bed and take what she'd wanted for so long, she climbed off. She felt cold, but right, like this was the best decision she could have made.

"I would break it too," said Matt. Glancing at him, Andy saw the look on his face mix resignation and the sort of loss that comes from closing a door you've held open for a long time, waiting for a chance that will never come. She could remember his face the morning he'd met some strange girl coming out of her room, the open look of hurt and betrayal, and this was better. She felt so much regret for that, for the stupidity and selfishness of her younger self and how she'd hurt Matt. She knew she wouldn't regret this choice, not in the same way, notwith loathing and self-recrimination. Matt stood and Andy opened her arms, sighing with relief when he walked into them without hesitation. She squeezed him tight, face pressed into his chest. He shifted slightly away from her and she laughed with a strangled sound that was almost a sob.

"I already know you have a boner," she said.

"I'm being polite," he protested.

"Fuck being polite," she said. "Fuck it."

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Andy's phone rang too early in the morning. She grumbled as she fumbled for it on the nightstand and wormed her hand back under the pillow to hold it to her ear. Kylie was already talking by the time Andy managed to get it round the right way.

"Huh," she said. "What?"

"Fuck, can't your girlfriend ring at a decent hour?" grumbled Patrick, flinging a rolled up magazine over the side of his bunk into Andy's bunk.

"Fuck you, there might be phone sex," mumbled Joe. Andy couldn't see either of them but she worked her arm out of the covers and gave them the finger as the rest of her emerged more slowly and dropped the phone from her sleepy hand. "Or Andy might be sleeping naked," he said, "that's a bonus."

Andy flipped him off again and got the phone back up to her ear. "This better be good," she slurred. She blinked and frowned as her brain slowly started the waking process.

"Timezones, I always forget them," burbled Kylie.

"Blah," said Andy. "Stop staring at my tits."

"I'm not," said Kylie.

"Joe," said Andy, frowning vaguely across the aisle. She couldn't be bothered covering up. "Probably Pete. He's very quiet."

"Are you naked?"

"It's... fuck, is it 5am? Of course I'm naked."

"Andy is very naked," observed Joe.

"Fuck off, Joe," said Andy. She felt cotton-headed and not really equipped for dealing with any of these. She wanted several more hours sleep and a coffee, but she knew Kylie wouldn't ring unless it was something important. "I'm awake now. Kylie, speak."

"Oh, oh, I want to make a 'zine," said Kylie.

"You woke me up at dawn's hairy ass-crack for _that_?" asked Andy. She was revising her opinion as her brain slowly engaged.

"I want you to write for it," said Kylie.

"What?" said Andy.

"That doesn't sound like phone sex," said Patrick.

"Fuck you, Patrick, and Joe, stop staring at my tits and go back to sleep, Jesus," said Andy. "Kylie, wait." Tossing her phone down on the covers, Andy wriggled out of bed and grabbed a pair of panties from the pile at the foot of the bed, hoping that they were clean. Joe cheered as she shimmied them up her legs and dragged a t-shirt over her head. Grabbing her phone, she headed for the front lounge and caffeine. Punching Joe hard on the shoulder as she past, she hissed "You're going back to Remedial Feminism later." His laughter followed her into the front lounge.

"Kylie," Andy started, phone jammed between ear and shoulder as she fumbled with the coffee machine, "my bandmates are objectifying douchebags. I was happy in a momentary hiatus of denial. Thanks for ruining that."

"You should never be in denial," said Kylie. "Want to ring me back when you have coffee?"

"You couldn't offer that before?" Andy demanded.

"Where's the fun in that?" said Kylie.

"Fuck you," said Andy. "The machine is going. Tell me about this fucking 'zine, now that I am awake."

"I'm making it, with Matt. And you. And maybe Ry."

"Isn't Matt out on the road?" asked Andy.

"Yeah, he'll be crossing tours with you in a few weeks," Kylie said. "That's what I'm thinking, for the theme you know."

"You spent too much time at college. Who the fuck thinks about themes?"

"Fuck you," said Kylie. "Way to be supportive. Perhaps I won't ask you again." The anger in her voice was clear and Andy felt a wave of contrition. Just because she was still half asleep and grumpy didn't mean that Kylie had to take the brunt of it. That wasn't what their friendship was about. There were no punching bags here, and no excuses.

"Sorry," said Andy. "It's still early. Explain again, please."

"I miss my family," said Kylie. "You remember, when we were at college and we were reading those amazing anarchist 'zines from wherever - remember those crazy German primitivist ones with the fertility-rite-plus-contraception cartoons? - and we talked about the idea of tribes and what that might mean in an anarchist sense?"

"It seems like a lifetime ago," said Andy. "But yes."

"We always talked about how you find people, how you build up those linkages with them. We talked about the unfairness of anarchy being described as individualistic."

"I remember," said Andy. "I remember you punching that dude in the face when he said that you just wanted a collective so you didn't have to build your own hut for when you on the rag."

"Yeah, well, I remember you putting a used sanitary pad under his pillow," retorted Kylie. She sounded more cheerful now, and her voice had that rhythm that it got when she was speaking of something she'd considered for a long time.

"No, that wasn't me. I put one between the pages of his notebook. Matt put the one under his pillow."

"Whatever, it was funny. He was furious."

"Yeah," agreed Andy. "And that's what this is about? About how we stay family?"

"I don't know," said Kylie. "Maybe."

"Maybe it's an excuse to ring me first thing in the morning when I'm naked," said Andy. "Perhaps you were hoping I'd offer to send pics."

"That too," laughed Kylie, but it was quiet laughter.

"I'll write something," said Andy. "I'll write about being on the road with one family and returning to another. I'll write about compromise and expectation."

"Yeah?" asked Kylie. She sounded ridiculously hopeful, and Andy wondered what it was like for her at home, about whether she was missing the road, missing the rest of her family.

"Yeah," said Andy. The coffee machine stopped gurgling and Andy pulled out a cup. It was almost clean. She opened the fridge and pulled out her soy milk. It was nearly empty when she shook it and she cursed. "You'll need pics, right?"

"Not of your naked body. But for the 'zine? Definitely," said Kylie. "Why?"

"Because some asshole finished my soy milk," grumbled Andy.

"Hey, we're not going to be that sort of zine," said Kylie. "No photos of you torturing information out of your bandmates."

"Spoilsport," said Andy. "But okay. I can work with that."

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Occasionally, just sometimes, an interviewer would be sympathetic. Mostly, they were assholes with sexist, racist, homophobic streaks as wide as their shark-like grins. Andy was rarely inclined to like them, or feel any urge to open up. She would talk willingly about superficial things, or even more intimate things like her drums and musical influences, but she stayed on her guard. She liked to talk about decisions they had made, like doing small tours in clubs as well as in arenas. She liked to talk about the sort of music they were making, though she rarely talked about the details of their process or her urge to punch Pete in the face repeatedly.

The very best interviews, she thought, were the most simple. The ones where they talked about music and growing up with rhythm or melody in their blood or bellies like a fire. Sometimes, they talked about the fans and how important they were. It wasn't like Andy wanted to save their goddamn lives, but she wanted them to see that dreams were okay.

Just sometimes, interviews weren't an ordeal to get through, or a reminder of all the ways that the way you looked and the lies you bought into were important. Sometimes, it was just about the music. Andy liked that; could appreciate that honesty.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Andy's drumsticks shaped themselves to her hands; she had calluses in the long lines where they sat. When she was behind her kit and the music was shaping itself around the rhythm she set, all she could see were the lights and the crowd, arms up and out in supplication and celebration. The joy of playing sat deep inside her, just waiting to come out and play every night. She stood side stage with Pete, waiting for Patrick and Joe to stop fussing with their guitars, watching the crowd and the hurrying techs.

"There were times I doubted we'd make it," said Pete. Andy looked at him, seeing him staring as if he was still playing gigs to 20 people in someone's basement and the crowd was just a dream.

"You're pretty persuasive," said Andy. "You persuaded Patrick to sing, seduced us all with your words."

"I seduced you?" asked Pete, looking at her and grinning toothily.

"Don't push your luck. I might give you another black eye, and we can't carry off make up like My Chem can."

"Spoilsport," said Pete. "Still, I'm glad you joined. We wouldn't be here without you."

"I thought it was the Pete and Patrick show round here," said Andy. "Just last night, a girl asked me where you were."

"Oh, did that hurt your ladykilling ego?" asked Pete.

"If she had bad enough taste to prefer you to me, I wasn't interested," said Andy. Pete laughed and flung his arm around her, holding her tight. Every night felt new, and Andy knew that neither of them got tired of performing. Not this sort, anyway, no matter how much they wanted to let their other roles lapse. Andy leaned in and licked Pete's neck, laughing as he spluttered and made a performance of wiping off her spit.

"You taste gross," she said. "No way any girl would ever prefer you to me if she ever actually _met_ you."

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Sometimes, when Andy made the mistake of looking at the actual interviews, she would get caught up in the series of two-dimensional sketches that she was made from. If you took them all and mashed them up, you wouldn't get a three dimensional person. You'd get a triptych of social expectations, a cubist rendition of tiny facets that never quite made a whole. Andy thought it was stuck in some surreal place between grotesque and absurd, particularly given the airbrushed ideal of a woman. Andy had lost count of the number of magazines that had offered her dresses, manicures and makeovers.

Interviewers had a thousand ways to point out how she failed at being plucked and powdered. She failed at that manufactured vulnerability that grew into a real sense of helplessness. Andy listened to their questions about being a tomboy, about whether she didn't have time to shave, about how she must be so sad that she couldn't wear dresses all the time, and she just let it roll over her. She could remember the days where this sort of casual dismissal would have made her blood boil, and she wasn't always sure what it said about her that she was resigned to it now. She still let Pete talk about subversion and gender norms and all the earnest ideals he seemed to have keep intact.

Andy just said no to the make-up and makeovers, kept her well-worn jeans and her band t-shirts, and didn't much care. She shrugged off the questions and the intrusion, and wondered if this was easier or harder than being angry. It was different and made her feel thin and faded, but she hadn't broken a glass on purpose in two years. She still wasn't sure that was progress.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

"What the fuck is this?" she asked, looking up at the building in front of them. Pete had hold of her arm and Joe and Patrick pressed close on the other side.

"Your present," said Pete. "We thought you'd like it."

"It's a _photography studio_. What am I going to do with that?"

Joe's hand tightened on the back of her neck as he laughed softly, and Patrick leaned closer and wormed an arm around her. "Let's go inside and see," he suggested.

Andy was reluctant. Her bandmates had the looks she'd learned to mistrust over the years, the ones that usually heralded brilliant ideas that were doomed to failure, or just weren't brilliant in the first place. But Pete had hold of her arm and was dragging her forward, and Andy had learned that compromise with Pete was often better than outright refusal, at least up until it was something that couldn't be negotiated. Patrick gave her an encouraging smile from the other side and Andy found herself inside the foyer of the building, blinking at the light and warmth. Then she saw the photographs.

"You brought me to a _fetish_ photographer?" she said. Joe laughed as Pete sent her an exasperated look.

"You don't need to make it sound so sleazy," he said. "They specialise in non-traditional portraiture. You're pretty fucking non-traditional."

"Don't glare at me," said Patrick. "This was all Pete's idea."

"If you didn't agree with him, you wouldn't be here," retorted Andy. "And it's a lot easier to escape from just him."

"Pete just thought - well, we all did, actually - that you could do with a photoshoot where no one was trying to minimise you, or airbrush you, or make you into something else," Joe said. Andy stopped trying to tug her arm free of Pete's grasp and looked at the earnestness in her band mates' faces.

"Yeah," said Pete, "except I might have said that you were fucking hot the way you were." Joe punched Pete on the shoulder, causing him to let go of Andy's arm.

"Let me get this straight," Andy said. "You got me an appointment to have studio photos with a fetish photographer - please, Pete, did you think I'd buy your non-traditional euphemism? - because you think I need a chance to look beautiful on my own terms?"

"You are beautiful on your own terms," said Patrick. "Personally, I'd like people to stop asking about my bald patch, but nevermind. It's not about me."

"I don't know whether to kiss you all for a really thoughtful present or to punch you in your presumptuous faces," said Andy. She looked around at the photos on display, this time seeing past the surface shock to the affection that underlined it. The photographer wasn't after the obvious, Andy could see that immediately. She saw only respect, only a celebration of what made each frame gorgeous. She wasn't sure it would work, that the photographer would be able to mine past all her barriers, but she could try. If she failed, it was something that only she would know. Well, and maybe her boys too. She didn't mind. The happiness grew like a bubble inside her, the thought that these boys had come up with this and cared enough to arrange it. They were special, with her and to her, and she smiled, small at first but widening fast as she looked from Pete's grin to Patrick's dawning smile.

"Okay," she said, "group hug." She held out her arms and Pete flew into them, pressed up close and tight, all the intimacy and overshare and co-dependence she'd always been frightened of, but today she took him into her arms and held on tight. Patrick tucked under her other arm, close up against Pete's side too. Joe's arms circled as much of them as he could reach from behind, his face tucked into her neck and hair. Andy felt warm and surrounded, felt the rightness of this little family all squeezed up inside her, and she was glad that she'd said yes to Pete Wentz, all those years ago. She felt Joe's lips curve in a smile against her skin and felt a moment of regret, but the good kind that came from making a hard decision. Mostly the incandescence of happiness burned away all that past.

"Wow," said a voice behind them, "I haven't done polyamoury for a while." Andy looked up to see the photographer standing there, hands on her hips and head tilted to the side, like she was looking into them for the beauty they made. Right now, Andy felt like she wouldn't have to look too deep to see it.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

The club was dark and the music was too loud, but Andy had energy to burn and a rare late bus call. Pete didn't want to dance, but he was always up for clubs and people, and Joe didn't really care where they went so long as he could have a beer and watch the room. Patrick was there, tucked in close to Pete's side like always, and Andy watched the effortless closeness between them and wondered how they'd negotiated it for so long with so few mistakes. She put down her water and turned to the floor.

The press of bodies felt familiar; anonymous hands and arms and eyes, and Andy slipped through the crush with her own body, brushing against strangers and letting herself feel the mood and movement of them. Each dancefloor was the same and different, packed and heated and slippery with its own kind of hive mind. This one was perfect, hedonistic and optimistic both, and Andy opened and closed her eyes on a series of images that stood out against the lights like silhouettes or cameos. Each one was a curve that made part of a set: the arch of a girl's arms over her head, or the vulnerable insides of a boy's white wrists, the strip of skin between well-worn jeans and a t-shirt. Andy wanted to collect them all and keep them inside herself. She always felt freer when it was just the pleasure of her body and the jostle of skin.

Sometimes Andy thought that this was the essence of savagism. It wasn't bloody, or competitive, or focused on survival. At the root of being primitive was joy, a tribal, feral, body-centred joy. She thought that she was most in touch with it here, alone but part of something big and formless, amorphous. She danced, sweeping her hair back and lifting her eyes to the lights the way she imagined her ancestors had lifted theirs to the stars. She felt human, deep down, all the performance stripped away, all the sociability, all the hard choices. She was her body, and the warm press of flesh on hers was part of that. She felt joyous and uncomplicated.

Opening her eyes to the warm curve of an inviting hand on her wrist, Andy looked at the couple dancing in front of her. The woman was dark-haired, sleek, the man scruffy in the appealing way that some men could pull off. Andy moved closer, feeling her lips curve and her muscles unwind just that little further. This was what she was after tonight, something primal and raw. Shifting closer, she trailed her own fingers up the inside of the woman's wrists, up the curve of her arms and shoulders, letting both of them draw her closer. The music was loud, too loud for talking, but perfect for setting the beat for a dirty grind.

Andy lifted her face for kisses, soft lips or the scrape of scraggly stubble, hands she didn't know in her hair or on her jaw, sliding over her collarbones and under the hem of her shirt. Her body, already thrumming with the exhilaration of the stage, started to hum with arousal too. This felt good, surrounded by strangers, communicating only via touch. This was her vision of what the best of times were like, what primitive joy must have been like. She bit along the man's throat, feeling the vibration of his moan under her lips, while the woman's hands slid up under her shirt and over her belly, up to cup one breast.

A hand on her shoulder, shaking her, broke the spell for Andy. She looked up to see Joe there, tapping at his wrist. Time to go, then. She sighed and pressed a kiss to each of her dance partners, leaving them wrapped around each other as she followed Joe from the floor. He tucked his arm around her, the better to steer her through the crowd, and she just hummed in acknowledgment of his touch. They gathered up Pete and Patrick on the way, tumbling out the door to security and a car back to the bus, and the next stage in the road. Andy felt like she never stopped moving, on an endless migration back and forth. Tonight, she didn't mind. Tonight, she was quintessential. She was the chaos and the joy of the first night, wild and free.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Some interviewers asked about her tattoos. Some asked about future plans. Some asked if she regretted dropping out of school, others if she thought about having kids. Some asked if she believed in compatible star signs or what she thought of this season's colours. There was no limit to their intrusiveness, or their banalities. There was an all-encompassing sense of entitlement to them, and sometimes, as Andy sat in a studio or at the other end of the phone, that was what made this the least favourite part of her job.

Occasionally, she got a chance to talk about what she wanted their music to be to the fans, what being a fan meant to her.

But she'd never gotten to use her own words, not until Kylie asked her. Andy could think about all the places she'd been, and the things that the black ribbon of the road meant to her, and how it twisted through all the important things and wove them together in a messy nest. It was fit for a crow to sit and collect: notes, drums and friends made part of the weave. Andy could think about home and what she meant by that, too. It had changed so much from a neat three bedroom house in a quiet street and a string of warmed up dinners and a mother who still wasn't sure what to make of her. Now she had space, and people who filled it with ideas and possibility. Andy didn't think she was missing out.

When she sat down to write, all her notebooks stacked on the bunk in front of her in a worn pile of paper and ink, Andy wasn't sure where to start. She had ideas like a constellation, but they shifted in the skies as she reached for them to distill them down. Kylie wanted to hear about the dichotomy of home and the road, maybe something thoughtful and nuanced about gender and the bullshit that went with that. Andy sat still for a long time with her paper, her laptop and her ideas. She had to leave them and come back, again and again.

Reading through her notes, all the answers she wished she'd been able to give to all the asinine questions, Andy wanted to laugh sometimes. There were things that were just ludicrous, like the interviewer who insisted that she must be sad she couldn't shave her legs as often as she wanted on tour, or the magazine that rang her three times a day in the week before an interview, desperate interns and PAs begging her to accept their free makeover. She could remember the ones that had made her blood boil too, the ones where one of the guys had had to talk her out of setting fire to the office of the magazine or radio station responsible. To be fair, sometimes Pete wanted to torch them too. Patrick would glower at them both and distract Pete, and Joe was usually mellow enough to listen to Andy rant until she could write it up in her journal without putting her pen through the page.

When Andy looked at the questions that were asked, all she saw was erasure. There was a smudging of all her edges in a quest to make her acceptable, make her palatable. They wanted to take her tattoos and her competence and make them softer and dimmer. They wanted to airbrush all her spark and every contrary thought she'd ever had, take them back to the blank canvas of idealised femininity.

Finding the very first journal was almost like finding a time machine. She opened it up and the cover felt worn under her fingers. She looked at the first page and the very first thing she'd written in it; a big looping title across the top of the first page: _who are you, sweetheart?_.

Andy didn't know if she was closer to a definitive answer to that one than she had been then, even though she'd heard the question hundreds of times, wrapped up in different cloth and disguised as a pleasantry. Sometimes, it was an accusation, or an effort to belittle and dismiss. Andy had gotten better at ignoring the questions, but the answers still nagged at her.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

It was good that Pete had his record label and his clothing line. It took up a lot of the time and energy that used to be put into harassing his bandmates and generally being a pain in the ass. Patrick was getting more and more into producing, and was seldom seen without his earphones. Andy sometimes looked at him and wondered what he would do without his props to hide behind. Joe seemed unconcerned about his spare time and always managed to amuse himself. Given that even two buses were so small, Andy sometimes wondered how she managed to so often feel like she was rattling round the space like a rogue pinball.

"You're bored," announced Kylie.

"No kidding," said Andy. She was stretched out on a ratty sofa in the back of an arena, practice pad abandoned on the table beside her. In some ways, it was comforting that the furniture never changed, no matter how big they got. The difference between an arena and the dirty, all-ages halls she'd used to play was all in the trappings. She listened to Kylie's voice in her ear and thought of how they'd dreamed of being in a band big enough for an arena tour. Now Andy was here, and it was as wearing and exhilarating as anything she'd ever known. She felt restless in a way that made her feel too big for her skin but too small for the room.

"I'm sending out your copies of the 'zine," Kylie said. "I sent them via your management, so they should be with you soon. In fact, I'm surprised they're not there yet."

"Yeah?" asked Andy. "Are you going to tell me what the others did now?"

"No. But you'll like it, I think. It's interesting, to look at the work we all made and see how the pieces all fit together and how they make this whole, slotted together like rocks in a dry stone wall."

"I thought you didn't believe in walls or boundaries," said Andy.

"We played in a place last night that had some impressive masonry. It was solid."

"Masonry: the second oldest profession?" asked Andy.

"When we start our anarchist retreat house, you'll want our bleeding times hut to be made of stone, don't lie." Andy could hear the laughter and warmth in Kylie's voice; it reminded her of the days when they'd first met and spent their time talking and planning. Now they had more to do, more to be and choose from, but some of Andy's favourite times were still when they just talked about their ideals and opinions and the way they wanted to change the world.

"You know I believe strictly in a hunter-gatherer society," said Andy.

"I'd love to watch you in the hunt," said Kylie, "and I don't mean the hunt I usually see you in."

"Between you and this fucking band, I may as well take a vow of celibacy," grumbled Andy. "I find fucking post-its on my pillow, get little reminders about fucking groupies and the dangers thereof whenever one of them remembers, which means Pete fucking Wentz in my face at three in the fucking morning, and haven't had sex in at least ten days."

"Actually, I think that is completely normal," said Kylie, laughing softly at her end of the line.

"You're not helping," said Andy. "Shall I add you to the list of people policing my fucking sexuality?"

"Fuck you," said Kylie, laughing harder. Andy could just imagine her face, how she'd look as she laughed. "You know I think you should find yourself a nice little pod of anarcho-primitivist kids and settle down into polyamourous love," Kylie continued.

"Maybe I'm saving myself for you," said Andy.

"I don't think that's it," said Kylie. "I think you should just figure out what the fuck you're doing and who you want to do it with."

"Really?" asked Andy. "Because I really just want to have you and Matt, Stu and Ryan. I want our house and our collective. That's all. I don't want all this other shit." Andy felt better for having said it, even though it left her a little shaky with the residual terror of the truth.

"Baby, do you think I don't want that too?" Kylie asked. Andy swallowed hard against the lump in her throat, and the sudden sting of tears.

A knock on the door made Andy look up, meeting the gaze of one of the roadies. He jerked his chin up and dropped a box onto the table in front of her.

"Hey, my box just arrived," said Andy. "That's good. I was getting maudlin."

"I'll hang on while you open it," said Kylie.

"It's already been opened," said Andy, jamming the phone between her shoulder and her ear. "Damn untrusting management."

"Open it," urged Kylie. Andy snorted and pulled back the cardboard on the top. She stopped and stared at the top copy, the black lettering stark on the cheap white paper. Tracing her fingers over it, she swallowed hard and laughed suddenly. Her shaky moment of emotion passed and joy bubbled through her restlessness in an effervescent wave. She felt lighter than she had in days, buoyant on the warmth of her family.

"You called it Fuck City," she said. "Kylie, our 'zine is called Fuck City."

"Yes," crowed Kylie. "It's perfect, right?" Her happiness was clear down the line, and Andy felt her own cheeks ache from the span of her smile.

"Yeah," said Andy. "Fucking perfect."

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

**Epilogue**

Andy closed the phone and dropped it on the table next to the box. The 'zine in her hand had the grainy, cheap bleeding ink feel of most 'zines, but this one was hers, at least in part. Andy flicked through her copy, pausing as she got to her contribution. The headline stared back at her, _Who are you, sweetheart?_.

Tracing her fingers over the words, Andy thought about how entwined she was with so many others, like a tangle of threads. She knew that was the key, that she was the people and the people were her. No one could escape that netting. Her words jumped out at her in phrases and small knots of meaning. Closing her eyes, she opened them again to the first line. _I am many. I am primitive joy. I am punishing rhythm. I am a crossing place of people. I am the choices I have made. I am the roads I have travelled. I am everything I need to be._


End file.
